Aimé Césaire

African Revolutionary Writers, Part 7b

Aimé Césaire, 1913-2008

Aimé Césaire

In any research of African writers, the name of Aimé Césaire crops up constantly. He was one of the early ones, giving an example to others. Like Frantz Fanon, he was born on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, and he taught Fanon when Fanon was a boy.

Like many other writers who are part of the African Revolutionary heritage, Aimé Césaire’s original writing is hard to find on the Internet. Thus the fact that his Discourse on Colonialism is available on the Internet is a great good fortune.

Whatever else, it is a wonderful piece of writing, and thoroughly class-conscious. For example, Césaire writes:

“It is a fact: the nation is a bourgeois phenomenon.”

This is a simple statement of a fact that dozens of other writers, who should have seen it, have failed to note.

Have a treat. Read Aimé Césaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism” now, for pleasure as much as for political profit. This is the Francophonie at its best.

• The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 1955, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.